


Duality

by autobotscoutriella



Series: Purimgifts: October Daye/InCryptid [2]
Category: InCryptid - Seanan McGuire
Genre: Collection: Purimgifts Day 2, Cryptozoology, Dancing, Double Life, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-21
Updated: 2021-02-21
Packaged: 2021-03-19 01:29:04
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 859
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29618520
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/autobotscoutriella/pseuds/autobotscoutriella
Summary: Juggling a double life as a professional dancer and a professional cryptozoologist isn't easy.
Series: Purimgifts: October Daye/InCryptid [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2190060
Comments: 4
Kudos: 4
Collections: Purimgifts 2021





	Duality

**Author's Note:**

  * For [estelraca](https://archiveofourown.org/users/estelraca/gifts).



There’s something distinctly ironic about being at my most invisible on a national stage. Sometimes, my life requires some weird contradictions.

Not that Valerie Pryor is invisible, at all – in fact, she’s the opposite. She’s recognizable under the right conditions, memorable in the way anyone on a reality TV competition might be. But at the same time, she’s predictable. People have expectations for a professional ballroom dancer, and none of those expectations include “secretly a cryptozoologist”. So I can go on national TV as much as I want, and the vast majority of people – including the ones I need to hide from – will never notice unless I decide to give them a reason.

Of course, there are days where it’s really damn hard not to give them a reason.

“James, we are on in half an hour,” I hissed, making sure none of our competitors were close enough to hear my exact words. “What do you _mean_ , you think there’s a basilisk in the basement? Why were you _in_ the basement?”

“It’s a really long story.” My dance partner looked far more flustered than he should have, which didn’t mean anything good for the dance coming up. “Look, it’s been a long time since I’ve seen a basilisk, and I could be wrong about this.”

“You’d better be,” I muttered, but I was already checking to make sure my weapon holsters – the ones no one would have ever expected Valerie Pryor to wear – were secure. I wasn’t armed for basilisk. Those weren’t supposed to be _anywhere_ near urban areas, and reptiles were my brother’s specialty, anyway. If it was a basilisk, I was going to have to call in backup, and there went my dance competition. “Okay. Cover for me. If I’m not back in ten minutes, assume you were right.”

The basement was hard to find; if I hadn’t scouted out the first day I had arrived, I wouldn’t have known which of the many Do Not Enter doors to enter. The stairs were old, worn, and slippery in high heels. I was definitely going to have to find out what James had been doing down here in the first place – though if it was a chupacabra thing, he probably wasn’t going to tell me.

“Any basilisks down here?” I muttered, brushing an imaginary cobweb off my skirt as I made my way across the dusty storage room toward the corner James had described. Basilisks weren’t particularly big, only about the size of a turkey, and they wouldn’t be easy to spot in the semidarkness. The building owners clearly hadn’t bothered to make the basement TV-ready. There was only one bare lightbulb in this particular storage room, and it cast a lot of ominous shadows around the towers of boxes, empty clothes racks, and other paraphernalia.

But despite the basement generally feeling like the set for a monster movie, nothing moved in the shadows. I spent five minutes looking, found nothing, and decided that my best option was going to be to call home and see if there had been any sightings or unusual behavior in the area before I went hunting for a creature that might not exist.

 _After_ the competition. I had priorities, and a basilisk that might or might not exist and hadn’t hurt anyone to my knowledge was pretty low on the list.

Mindful that my ten minutes was almost up, I took the stairs two at a time – not the easiest in heels, but the quickest way to get to the top – closed the door carefully, and half-sprinted around the corner to get back to the dressing rooms.

And ran _straight_ into one of my competitors, a tall blonde who looked just as startled to see me as I was to see her. “Valerie! What are you doing back here?”

I had a lot of good reasons to be back here. Unfortunately, none of them were the kind of reasons anyone would have associated with Valerie.

I smiled nervously – that part wasn’t entirely fake - and said, “I needed to stretch my legs. I get too nervous just waiting around in the dressing rooms.” Shit, what was her name again? Leslie? Lisa? We’d only been introduced once.

“Well, you’d better hurry,” she said. She sounded like she believed me, at least. “You’re on in twenty minutes.”

“Really? That close?” I kept the sarcasm out of my voice and let a little alarm creep in. “Shit, I’d better get going. See you out there!”

Once I was sure I was far enough down the hall to not be suspicious, I slowed down, this time to listen for her footsteps.

She wasn’t following me. In fact, I was pretty sure that the _creak_ I heard was the basement door. That was interesting, and not the good kind of interesting.

But I could deal with it later, whatever it meant. There were plenty of weird things she could be doing that didn’t fall into _my_ sphere of weird, and even if it did, I’d know about it sooner or later.

For the moment? I had a partner to reassure, and Valerie Pryor had a dance to attend.


End file.
